Communication software Skype is available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. As you probably know, Skype lets you send instant messages or make voice or video calls over the internet. What you may not know unless you're a Mac or Linux user is that the Windows client tends to get all the cool new features first. But eventually they tend to make their way into the clients for other platforms.
This week Skype introduced Skype 2.1 beta 2 for Linux. The most noticeable change is that the Linux client now supports screen sharing, a feature that's been available in the Windows version of Skype since the middle of last year.
Skype 2.1 beta 2 for Linux also supports quoting messages in chat, has a new "report abuse" option, and adds support for localized time formats and UI styles.
You can read about all the changes since the last beta in the release notes.
Comments (0) 22.01.2010. 10:04
Hot on the heels of the final release of the Karmic Koala, we've put together a video montage of 64-bit versions of Microsoft's Vista and Windows 7 operating systems booting alongside Canonical's Ubuntu 9.04 and 9.10. Watch all four at once and see which one wins!
Each operating system has been freshly installed and features exactly the same hardware configuration. Auto-login is enabled, and each will launch Firefox which will then proceed to load our homepage.
Comments (0) 29.10.2009. 12:34
Some would say this has been a long time in coming, but others are probably looking around to see if they can spot Babe the pig taking off: Microsoft has announced it is submitting 20,000 lines of source code to the Linux kernel under the GPL2 licence.
Even Microsoft seems to be aware how strange this situation is, describing the move as "a break from the ordinary". The code essentially provides device drivers for Linux that help it detect when it is running on Microsoft's proprietary Hyper-V virtualisation system so that performance is improved.
Sam Ramji, the senior director of Platform Strategy in Microsoft’s Server and Tools division, said the code was there to "enhance interoperabilty" between Windows and Linux, "to provide the choices our customers are asking for." Tom Hanrahan, the direction of Microsoft's Open Source Technology Center (it has one of them?) was more specific: "The Linux device drivers we are releasing are designed so Linux can run in enlightened mode, giving it the same optimized synthetic devices as a Windows virtual machine running on top of Hyper-V. Without this driver code, Linux can run on top of Windows, but without the same high performance levels."
Continue reading 20.07.2009. 11:40